Of the Kensington of 1793 I need not say much; for most of those who read this little book will be quite familiar with the astonishing change that has come over this locality since then. We like to recall the fields and woods through which the first seat-holders of Hornton Street Chapel walked to worship on the Sunday, even though the thought suggests melancholy reflections on our own loss in this respect. We are more content to have a century of time between ourselves and the footpads who infested the road that led to London. It appears that in 1820, when Mr. Faulkner was completing his history, a new church had been erected in Marylebone; and we are congratulated on the fact, because the joint parishes of Kensington and Paddington contain as many as twelve thousand people! And as for some years previous the great increase in the population had been causing considerable anxiety, and even alarm, we may easily estimate the paucity of the population of Kensington in 1793. The year of our origin is famous in history as the French Revolution year. We cannot forget to what gloomy forebodings, as to the future of religion, that momentous event gave rise. It is not of course anything heroic, but it is not without its sublime side, that amid the wild and violent prophesyings of that time, the founders of this Church sat quietly down to discuss plans and estimates for erecting a meeting-house for those to worship in who, as they believed, would still desire to seek the Lord, when all the “fool-fury of the Seine” was remembered only with horror and pity. Theirs was a sound, substantial faith that was not frightened by chimeras, nor even dismayed by actual portents as alarming as the French Revolution. When a State has thrown over its Church with such violence as was used in France, it was surely something to belong to a Church that asked nothing, and expected nothing, from the State, except freedom to do its work unpatronised and unmolested. While March, 1793, is the date of the first public document introducing the new church to the inhabitants of Kensington, it is quite clear that a quiet and effective spiritual work had been proceeding in a very simple way for some time previous to the erection of Hornton Street Chapel. This work was largely due to Mr. Saunders, the “body coachman” of George III., who was in the habit of providing His Majesty with religious tracts, and who had now retired to Kensington, where he was apparently the guiding spirit of a small conventicle “in a very humble dwelling.” In such apostolic simplicity the Church began, and in course of time there was a sufficient nucleus of members and sympathisers with the freer methods of worship of the Dissenters, as to justify the issuing of the following most significant appeal, which stands as the beginning of the Church records, but has no date attached:— “To the friends of Religious Liberty, Sincere Christianity, and of Benevolent dispositions, etc.,—